


Flanked by the almost unfamiliar

by Kartaylir



Category: A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28016112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kartaylir/pseuds/Kartaylir
Summary: “Don’t worry,” Three Seagrass had said, with just a little crinkle around her eyes as she smiled. “It’s not a nice restaurant.”
Relationships: Mahit Dzmare/Three Seagrass
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Flanked by the almost unfamiliar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfraven80](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfraven80/gifts).



“Don’t worry,” Three Seagrass had said, with just a little crinkle around her eyes as she smiled. “It’s not a nice restaurant.”

And that was all she’d said about the place, leaving Mahit Dzmare to wonder just where exactly they were heading. Somewhere that catered to outsiders, perhaps? Or something casual, the sort of place that young students went to for quantities of food at little cost? There were too many choices to guess at, and she had no further information with which to narrow matters down.

Instead, she looked out to the city around them as they traveled. The gilded heart of it at first, quieter and yet with the shining faceplates of the Sunlit still lurking when she looked closer. Then the spaces for gardens, the intricacy of the buildings gave way to stone and silver towers, with the streets beneath them almost still.

The order of the world drew out into wider circles, spirals, the shapes of flowers. The buildings grew shorter again, revealing the openness of the sky, the lines snaking across the streets for a thousand purposes. Food, shopping, work, or to offer themselves to the new effigy of war. 

Three Seagrass leaned closer against the window as if seeking something specific among them, and it was that which made Mahit sense that they were drawing close.

And so she finally couldn’t help but wonder just what made their destination unique, what details of it had made it an intriguing sort of improper place to bring a barbarian. As they turned onto the final street she saw how citizens milled about or nursed mugs of some warm drink at a dozen tiny cafes, their cloudhooks a vivid array of metal. The covered path they walked along the street held seats with woven backs, a few hastily painted over larkspurs on a nearby wall, and on another a spear sending forth the light of a dying sun. Just another street outside the most bloodstained heart of the world. Something almost normal.

She let Three Seagrass order while she stood awkwardly back. There was some order to the lines she couldn’t quite determine, for some of the people stood so close as to be almost pressed together, while others had an arm’s length or more of space separating them. Mahit thought she saw the plucked out threads of a purple flower on one sleeve, but it could just as easily have been some cue in the material of their clothes. Or some indicator of standing in the structure of their cloudhooks. 

Standing back left her exposed to the gaze of the citizens around her, who likely deemed her tall and strange and with too broad a smile. But the order itself didn’t take so long that she could consider drowning in that gap. Mahit Dzmare, Ambassador for Lsel, didn’t belong here. Wouldn’t belong here.

“Careful with this,” Three Seagrass said as she returned from the line. What she held in her hand looked like some sort of hollow reed stuffed with a filling that smelled of sugared nuts, a fluffy swirl of pastry wrapped around its center. “You eat it like-” She snapped it in half, so that the lower ends leaked out into the pastry. “Otherwise you’ll just squeeze it out the other end.”

“A trap for young _Askretim_ eating it for the first time?”

“Or an excuse to lick it off each other’s faces.”

Mahit was sure she flushed at that answer. At such a pleasant resolution to the unspoken question of why Three Seagrass had brought her here. She could still feel the sense of wanting to prove herself, to dance through poetry and allusion until she belonged in a way that couldn’t be mocked.

She took her own dessert, or meal, perhaps, undefined one way or another but seeming too sweet to her tastes, and snapped the reed as Three Seagrass had done. The filling seemed to swell out from those broken ends to fill the hole left in the pastry, and a careful bite revealed it to be light, delicate and with a crisp taste that wasn’t quite as sweet as she’d feared.

It felt, at least, as if she’d avoided getting any of it on her face, though was that a failure in itself? She saw a thin streak of cream atop the bottom of Three Seagrass’ cloudhook and wondered how many poems there were for moments such as this? She almost remembered something, the middle of words but not the start or end.

Overthinking, again. The smudge of white on metal, widened eyes, how Three Seagrass had quirked one corner of her mouth in a barbarian-style smile. Mahit didn’t need Yskander to tell her what this was, and he’d largely ceased in such reminders once the flirtations had become real, spoken, reflected in metal and water.

“You’ve got a little-just there,” she said, leaning in enough to feel the metal against her skin. To feel cream beneath her lips, cool against the heat of their touch. She would have been lying to herself to pretend this was never meant to end in a kiss.

And so it did, lips soft against each other, the delicate twirl of tongue against Mahit’s teeth. The cool sweetness of cream only there to heighten the heat in contrast. She almost needed a reminder to breathe.

She grew certain her cheeks had turned to crimson and pulled back, as if that would hide the sight of it. Mahit hid behind the rest of her food and awaited the questions she most dreaded. Already it had proven so hard to step away, to disentangle herself from all the strands of poetry and empire. From ever-foolish hope that she could truly belong, the lingering l dreams of being held up as an example of what those outside the world could be. But she’d seen enough to know that they’d never come to fruition. To know how difficult that not-belonging could be. How cruel the prospect of being in the heart of empire and yet far further from integration than the sort who named themselves All-Terrain Vehicle—

“I bought you some infofiches,” Three Seagrass said, interrupting those thoughts. “I thought...it’d be easier for you to send me messages then.”

Mahit widened her eyes in a Teixcalaanli smile. Another reminder. “I’d have sent them even if I had to track down one of your captains myself to do it.”

The sticks themselves were beautiful, fanciful little things. Nothing so ornate as those Nineteen Adze had sent, but still little pieces of carved wood from actual trees, all inlaid with designs of grasses and orchids. Of the two plants intertwined. A smaller indentation held strips of wax, flat and wide, with a stamp to accompany them. An empty space marked where a lighter might have been. 

“I’ll almost hate to use them,” she admitted.

“You’d better, or I’ll send you so many even an ambassador’s quarters couldn’t hold all of them.” Three Seagrass pointedly leaned in to lick a little bit of cream from the corner of Mahit’s lips. 

Had there been cream there? Did it matter?

“That wouldn’t be hard; you haven’t seen my quarters there. Though you could always come inspect them if they can spare you, Second Undersecretary.”

“It’s not that easy to get into Lsel Station, I did check.” Three Seagrass tapped one manicured nail against the gap where a light would have been. “And if I said I would, you’d not write me at all in the hopes of my visit.”

Mahit’s heart ached at the thought of that. Of beautiful, sharp Reed reciting and reforming the poetry of Lsel. Of the two of them pressed together in rooms the size of closets by Teixcalaan standards, safe within the curving walls. Of making some portion of this empire hers instead of being eaten up by it herself.

“I’d write to you no matter what. Though should you wish to visit...I am an ambassador. I could make arrangements.”

“Then it’s settled.”


End file.
